On January 31, 2009 The Medscape Journal will be discontinued.* One can only assume that the journal’s parent company, WebMD, could no longer justify the cost associated with a free, open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal that receives no income from advertisers or sponsors. The Medscape Journal’s budget has been supported by revenue generated from Medscape (the website), and their robust Continuing Medical Education (CME) business.

In these challenging economic times, American companies are taking a cold, hard look at their P and L spreadsheets and nixing the least profitable parts of their businesses. The inevitable “non-profit” casualties present an ethical dilemma. What will become of the noble pursuits that are based upon “doing the right thing” rather than making a profit?

There is no such thing as completely unbiased publishing (humans all have personal agendas – whether conscious or unconscious), though The Medscape Journal came about as close to it as any medical journal ever has. The journal is free to authors and readers, and provides 24-hour online access to both professional and lay viewers from around the globe. There are no advertisements or outside sponsors, peer reviewers work without compensation or specific recognition, and editors are paid a minimal salary (full disclosure: I know this because I was an editor for The Medscape Journal several years ago). CME credit is offered for articles determined to be of special relevance, but no articles are commissioned specifically for the purpose of CME.

The Medscape Journal is a wonderful experiment in high ethics. It espouses, in my opinion, the gold standard principles of medical publishing. Tragically, market forces (or perhaps the lack of perceived value by its own parent company) killed it. So what does this mean for medical publishing? If there is no economic model for “pure science” then are medical journals doomed to go the way of health media – promoting sensational or biased science for profit?(more…)

Have you ever heard of heavy leg syndrome? I hadn’t, until I read this BBC article about it – the British are apparently amused at this peculiarly French medical malady. Heavy leg syndrome is a common diagnosis in France, which alone consumes one third of the world’s drugs for this diagnosis.

Diseases certainly vary from population to population based upon genetics, environment, and lifestyle. But can it also vary just based upon the culture of diagnosis? It seems so.

Ever since it was recognized that there exists diseases – that different people can suffer from the same entity, rather than everyone having their own unique illness, the medical profession has described certain clinical presentations as syndromes. This is legitimate, but it must be recognized that this use of the term syndrome is purely descriptive. (As an aside, the term “syndrome” has a different and very specific use in describing certain genetic diseases.)

Paternalism is out of fashion. Doctors used to have a parent-child relationship with their patients: they concealed the truth if they thought it was in the patient’s best interest, they dictated the treatment and did not have to justify it to the patient. “You have to take this pill because I’m the expert and I know what’s best; don’t ask questions.” Sort of like “You have to go to bed now – because I said so and because I’m the mommy.”

Some time in the 20th century we evolved to a different doctor-patient relationship, an adult-adult one in which the doctor shared expert knowledge and information with the patient and they cooperated to decide on the best treatment plan. The principle of patient autonomy became paramount and the patient gave informed consent to the chosen treatment.

It is generally accepted that this is all for the good. But is it really? In his book Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation, Sandeep Jauhar says, “Over time, my views on informed consent have evolved. I no longer view paternalism as suspiciously as I once did. I now believe that it can be a core component of good medical care.” (more…)

THE SCENE: Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere where U.S. troops are risking life and limb.

THE TIME: The not-too-distant-future. Maybe even 2009.

Joe is on patrol.

It’s the middle of summer in the desert town. The air hangs heavy, hot, dry and dusty, like a blast furnace firing steel. The heat penetrates Joe’s 80 lb pack in much the same way the heat from boiling water penetrates the shell of an unfortunate lobster. Joe’s heart races. His squad is on edge; their eyes dart furiously to and fro, looking for the deadly threat that might lurk in the shadows. Every shadow is a potential source of death, every alley a refuge from which the enemy can attack and kill him or his buddies, every rooftop a fortress from which the enemy can rain death upon the squad. The area is known to be thick with terrorists and insurgents. Joe pictured them waiting unseen from every nook and cranny for the opportunity to attack. The skin on Joe’s back is all prickly. He distinctly feels as though he has a huge bullseye pointed on his back. He feels a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead and onto his eyelid, all slimy and salty. Joe desperately wants to wipe it away, but that would necessitate removing one of his hands from his weapon. The split second it would take for him to put it back might mean the difference between life and death for him or one of his buddies.

A loud roar fills Joe’s ears, and suddenly he feels as though he has no weight. The scene unfolds in slow motion, just like in the movies. Dazed, Joe hears a tumult as though from a great distance, but can see nothing. Yelling and gunfire all around, he becomes conscious enough to realize that he’s lying flat on his back. He feels searing pain in his legs and a hot liquid oozing around them. It occurs to Joe that it must be his own blood or even perhaps his own urine, but he’s just too dazed to care.

“Medic!” Joe hears someone scream. He feels someone pull his helmet from his head and realizes that the sound of gunfire and yelling is receding. His unit must be driving away the ambushers. Good! He thinks. Give those assholes hell, guys! He opens his eyes, and realizes that his buddy’s got his back, and turns to see another man, a medic, drop to his knees at his side. His uniform is stained a disturbing red. Joe feels the medic wrapping something around his thigh. It’s a tourniquet, and Joe cries out in pain as he feels it constricting around his upper thigh.

“Bleeding’s better!” Joe hears the medic say to his buddy. “I’ll take it from here.” Joe’s buddy runs off to join the rest of his unit, and the medic moves his face close to Joe’s. He feels himself being moved from side to side and then his legs being moved. More pain. Joe cries out.

The medic leans in to talk to Joe, “I think we’ve got the bleeding under control for now. I put a tourniquet on your leg. Let’s get you out of here. The docs’ll patch you up in no time.” Joe is vaguely aware of another corpsmen with a stretcher nearby. The medic leans in again, “Are you in pain, soldier?”

“What do you think? My leg hurts like a sonofabitch! I could really use something for the pain,” Joe hears himself yelling, again as if from a distance. Pain is shooting through his leg, setting every nerve on fire, and the tourniquet is biting into raw muscle through the edge of a wound that comes all the way up to his groin. The flayed edges of his skin shoot fire to his brain, and he can feel his broken bones grinding against each other every time he moves in spite of the splint.

The medic pulls a small box out of his pack. Joe sees that it’s a small case. He opens it. Its contents look something like this:

Joe is puzzled. Where’s the morphine? He wonders. “What are those needles?” Joe asks. “What are you doing? I’ve never seen syringes that look like that before!”

“Acupuncture,” replies the medic. “I’ll take care of you.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Joe replies.

“Stick them into your earlobe. It’ll take the pain away really fast.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” Joe screeches, trying to get up to grab the medic by the front of his uniform. “My leg’s a bloody mess, I’m in agony, and you’re tellin’ me you’re gonna stick little needles in my ear and make it all better? Like that‘s going to do anything! I need real pain medicine! Give me morphine! NOW!“(more…)

Recents posts by Drs. Albietz and Gorski have highlighted questions that are recurrent on SBM. We are convinced that medicine should be based on real knowledge, to the extent that it exists, and that physicians should be honest; these are matters of science and ethics. How do we reconcile that with heartfelt, if misguided beliefs of patients, their families, and others? When Dr. Albietz wrote that it might have been better for the chiropractor to visit in the same way that “priests, imams, prayer sessions, rabbis, etc visit children within the PICU,” it was reminiscent of Dr. Peter Moran’s hypothetical “witch doctor.” When he lamented academic medicine’s current dalliances with quackery, it brought to mind the NCCAM, David Katz, Andrew Weil, Bravewell , and their enablers.

Dr. Albietz argued that when talking to credulous patients or their families, taking a hard line against quackery is likely to be counter-productive. Most of us would agree with that. Dr. Gorski described a different scenario: after calling a quack “a quack” when talking to a friend of a friend who is a scientist, he concluded that he had been too “blunt.” Several commenters disagreed, but all would probably agree with Dr. Gorski that “you have to know when to pick one way over another; i.e., diplomacy over all out war or vice versa.”

Another Case of Foot-In-Mouth Disease

I recently had an experience strikingly similar to Dr. Gorski’s, during which I castigated myself for my rancor even as I was incapable of moderating it. Fellow blogger Dr. Val Jones was a witness!

I noted that “humor” is a designated category at Science Based Medicine, and that I hadn’t made full use of it yet. I hope that the holiday season has put you in the mood for a whimsical look at Christmas – from my “skeptical family” to yours. Enjoy!

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My sister Vicki lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her husband, three children and an alarmingly large and slobbery Saint Bernard named Gilbert. Several Christmases ago she decided to teach her then 5-year-old son, Harrison, about Christmas tree decorating. She took him to a Christmas tree farm and helped him select a tree. They hauled it back to the house and my sister managed, with no help whatsoever from Gilbert, to set it up in a nice corner of the living room. The tip of the tree reached the ceiling and its full figured branches spread from icy window to window.

Vicki and Harrison spent hours and hours winding lights, tinsel, ornaments, paper angels and popcorn strings around the tree. Little Harrison couldn’t wait to see the final product, with glittering lights and a magical star to top off their fine work. They decorated into the early evening, and the living room grew dark as the sun set over the snow covered neighborhood. At last it was time to plug in the tree lights.

I rather like Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Unfortunately, I seldom get to watch, mainly because I usually show up at work sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 AM, and I don’t like watching more than a few minutes of video on my computer.

However, Hugh Laurie, star of House, was interviewed by Conan and revealed himself to be not unlike me in that he’s definitely a booster of reason and science in medicine over irrationality and dubious “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) therapies. In fact, his attitude towards CAM appears to be not at all unlike that of the character he plays on House. Check out the interview. (If you want to watch, the relevant part of the interview begins at about 23:50 into the show.)

For those who might have problems playing Internet video, I’ve found a transcript:(more…)

As a fine example of poor medical reporting, let’s look at a local business magazine. The article, called “The Fatigue Factor”, is about fibromyalgia, and manages to get it wrong from the very beginning.

Some medical reporting is destined to be bad simply because the topic is too complex for a generalist reporter. But sometimes, a reporter succumbs to journalistic sloth. In this story, for instance, if the reporter had spoken to a recognized local expert rather than a self-proclaimed expert, she would have written a much different article.

Dr. Olivier Ameisen is a prominent French cardiologist who believes that the muscle-relaxant drug baclofen relieves the cravings of alcoholism. This is indeed an interesting, and as yet unsettled, scientific medical question. Dr. Ameisen has decided to take his personal scientific opinion directly to the public in his book – Le Dernier Verre (The Last Glass). The result has been a surge of interest among alcoholics for this new “miracle cure” for their affliction.

Increasingly the medical community is caught between two opposing imperatives. There is the desire to make medical information freely available and the process of medical research transparent. On the other hand, the public is best served when new ideas in medicine are put through the mill of science before they become part of medical practice. As we enter headlong into the information age these two imperatives are increasingly at odds.

Problems arise when a new treatment, syndrome, intervention, or concept in medicine is promoted to the public prior to undergoing a reasonable degree of scientific vetting. What is the point, after all, of spending tremendous resources on medical research if proponents are going to bypass the process altogether to market their modalities and promote their ideas directly to the public?

Note: This article was originally published in Skeptic magazine. Space limitations resulted in omitting some of what I wanted to say. I’m taking advantage of having a blog to publish the entire article as originally submitted.

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On an episode of Mythbusters, Adam Savage was shown a video clip that contradicted his memory of something he had said. He responded, “I reject your reality… and substitute my own.” He was joking. Unfortunately, the world is full of people who reject reality and who are not joking.

James Randi tells a story about a TV program that featured Uri Geller doing his standard trick of bending a key. Afterwards, the program’s host said it couldn’t possibly have been a trick because Uri had “never touched” the key. The host was then shown the recorded program, which proved that Geller clearly had the key in his hands, for two-and-a-half minutes. Instead of admitting having been wrong, the host exclaimed, “Well, that’s not how it happened.”

One of my own ancestors was a pro at this kind of thing. I’ll call her Aunt S (for stubborn). She had once tried tinned sardines, hated them, and refused to ever touch sardines again. One day she came into my grandmother’s kitchen when she was frying up some large fresh sardines a friend had brought her. Aunt S ate some, proclaimed them tasty, then asked, “What kind of fish were those, Mary?” My grandmother told her they were sardines. She protested, “No they weren’t! I don’t eat sardines!”